What you can do for your kids to prevent the flu amid rise in cases

As flu season peaks early in Oklahoma, schools are struggling with attendance as students and teachers fall ill. Health experts share key insights on flu prevention and the importance of vaccinations.

Health experts say this flu season peak has arrived earlier than usual and it’s hitting schools hard. Collinsville Public Schools announced on Tuesday that the high school will be in distance learning through Thursday. Several smaller districts like Berryhill and Salina have either canceled classes or gone to distance learning over the past few weeks because so many students and teachers have been sick. Larger districts like Owasso and Tulsa say their attendance is also taking a hit.

News On 6 spoke with Dr. Dustin Cupp – Family Physician at the Utica Park Clinic – about how influenza is affecting Green Country and ways to prevent or deal with it.

Q: What are you seeing this year?

A: "Respiratory illnesses across the board are significantly elevated right now. I was just looking at the state website for the Department of Health and flu is considered the highest level of activity right now. It’s very high. Rates have been significantly increasing since late December, early January.

Hospitalizations are up. I think I saw through the state website that there’s been about 20 deaths associated with flu, since the beginning of the current calendar year."

Q: Have you seen a year similar to this year, with all of these different respiratory diseases out there?

A: "It comes in waves, and right now it seems pretty high, no doubt. There are historic years to compare it to. I can remember the first swine flu back in 2010 and that, interestingly enough, that flu year was almost year round. We were even seeing flu cases in July and August of that year. 

This is maybe a little bit early for what Oklahoma typically sees from an influenza peak. Oklahoma typically is kind of late February or early March, when we tend to hit a peak."

Q: What about vaccination rates this year? Are vaccines lower than in years past?

A: "I don't know what the state numbers look like from influenza. I know within Utica Park, we were having a strong push to try to get as many people vaccinated as possible, and we had some pretty good success in doing so. Within our organization, we've had pretty good numbers in terms of vaccine uptake, particularly with our highest risk individuals.

As far as the state goes, again, I'm not really sure what the vaccination numbers look like, but at the end of the day, that still is the best way to protect yourself from influenza. The influenza vaccine is not perfect. It never has been. It's always predicated on a guesstimate of what's circulating.

The flu vaccine can't give you the flu. It does take about 30 days for your immune system to respond to an influenza vaccine. So you can still get the vaccine today, get exposed to the flu tomorrow and develop flu because it does take a little bit of time to create immunity in your body."

Q: What are some of the things that people can do to keep themselves safe from the flu?

A: "The biggest one is just good hygiene. Washing your hands well, avoiding instances as much as possible where others might be sick. And if you are sick, even if your symptoms are mild, if you’ve got a cough, a runny nose, sore throat, it’d be best to stay home and prevent potentially passing that on to others.

If you’ve got to cough or sneeze, use your elbow, not your hands.

Some people like to take Vitamin C or Elderberry and, in general, those things aren’t going to hurt you."